After the announcement of the $30 million Lamar Advertising investment, Insider reached out to Vistar Media CEO, Michael Provenzano for a discussion on the investment and the addition of a strategic partner.

How long have discussions been ongoing for the potential of raising additional capital?

We began active evaluation of potential funding paths in Q3 of 2020. There is tremendous momentum in the OOH and ad tech industries right now, and at Vistar we find ourselves hustling to take advantage of the current opportunity. The time is now to double down on our business and accelerate toward a growth rate that cannot be achieved organically and requires funding to accomplish. This is why we began evaluating different potential funding paths in Q3 of 2020.

Why was Lamar Advertising the right strategic partner for Vistar Media?

Through that evaluation, our long-term client and partner Lamar emerged as an opportunity for investment that would align well with our existing company strategy. Lamar has seen first hand the value of Vistar’s technology and team, and they believe in the future growth of the role software will play in media transactions and network operations.

I couldn’t be more pleased that the fuel for this next phase at Vistar comes from an investment by one of the most respected and successful companies in the out-of-home industry. Lamar believes that technology will be the driving factor behind an accelerated growth rate for the entire OOH industry, and over the course of our eight-plus year partnership together we’ve worked hard to prove that Vistar’s product vision and commitment to clients are squarely geared toward that same goal of full industry growth.

We would assume Lamar Advertising has been a significant client for Vistar Media?

Lamar was one of Vistar’s earliest clients and has consistently been at the forefront of leaning into technology, programmatic and training teams on how to use these tools to unlock new opportunities for OOH.

What message do you want your other clients to hear about how this investment will strengthen Vistar?

For our clients, this investment will fuel Vistar’s ability to develop new solutions, invest in deeper training and support resources, and accelerate growth to providing truly global services. Because we operate on both sides of the marketplace, the value to our clients shows in unique ways depending on the customer set:

For media owners:

• Most immediately, we will have more resources to go even deeper with buyers; particularly, building more solutions that connect OOH campaigns with the metrics that govern brand advertiser budgets will prove ROI and increase the spend in the marketplace.
• We’ve heard from many media owners the need for revenue management tools that can help drive up yield optimization across all transaction types and lines of business. We will be intensifying R&D to develop technology that can maximize the value of OOH networks today and in the future.
• As revenues increase across all networks, the complexity and cost of supporting that revenue also increases. We have already been investing in better systems to further automate operational processes and streamline support for the evolving landscape of buyers, making their investment in OOH as smooth as possible. We will be ramping up our efforts to provide advanced training and software so media owner teams can easily access the knowledge and technical tools to do more with networks at a lower resource cost.

For buyers: We’ve learned so much from our buyer group, but there are still gaps in making OOH an easy-to-invest-in medium. We are tackling some of the biggest problems buyers in our industry face, and this investment will fuel our efforts to build solutions.

• This investment will give us the resources to further connect OOH investment to the metrics that matter for advertisers. We will be actively accelerating development of solutions that tie OOH exposure to the full-funnel metrics that can demonstrate ROI and allow buyers to optimize media investment
• We will be intensifying focus on providing the best DSP experience for planning, managing and reporting on OOH campaigns. Most immediately, this will include further capabilities for granular campaign optimization and improved workflow tools to marry the seamless, data-driven world of digital activation with the visual, contextual world of OOH planning.
• It’s time to bring some things that are table stakes in other media channels, such as dynamic creative, to OOH at scale. This work is already underway, and we expect to make rapid progress thanks to added product and engineering resources.
• Ultimately, the static and digital worlds of OOH need to merge for integrated planning and measurement across the media channel. This is a big task and we now have both the capital to fund development and a bedrock of demand and supply partnerships to guide a global solution.
• One exciting area of expected growth is our work bringing the next generation of inventory into the marketplace, through our digital signage software. We’ve already successfully partnered with companies like Volta and a variety of retail media providers to transform their screens into impactful, valuable media properties and will be working to connect more innovative inventory into the marketplace.

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